Late president’s daughter attends Smolensk disaster hearing in Brussels

Marta Kaczynska: photo - youtube screenshot

The public hearing in Brussels is being led by MEPs from Poland’s Law and Justice, the conservative opposition party closely associated with the late president, who died alongside 95 others in the place crash in western Russia.

Marta Kaczynska, the daughter of the late president, attended in person and Lech Kaczynski’s brother, Jaroslaw – who leads the Law and Justice party – contributed via video link from Warsaw.

Kaczynski called into question the official explanation of the causes of the disaster, which put the blame mainly on pilot error.

“Poland has the sacred duty to do everything so that the truth about the Smolensk catastrophe is revealed - regardless of the content of that truth,” Jarosław Kaczyński told the hearing.

Today’s meeting was also attended by Law and Justice MP Antoni Macierewicz, who spearheaded an ‘independent’ investigation into the Smolensk crash, alongside Professor Wieslaw Binienda and Dr Kazimierz Nowaczyk, a civil engineer and physicist working in the USA.

Wednesday’s hearing is the fourth time the subject has been raised in the European Parliament.

The first such hearing into the crash took place in Brussels over one year ago.

In April 2011 an exhibition was displayed in the European Parliament buildings which attempted to prove that Russian authorities were damaging the wreck of the Tupolev to hamper further investigations into the causes of the crash.

Law and Justice MEPs also presented a “white book” on the Smolensk crash, which blames Russia for the crash.

According to Law and Justice MEP Ryszard Legutko, Poland and Russia’s official investigation into the Smolensk catastrophe is the “largest aviation scandal since the end of World War II.”

The comment comes after both Polish and Russian investigations and successive reports into the Smolensk crash were seen as not being exhaustive by most family members of the crash victims and sympathisers of President Lech Kaczynski and the Law and Justice party. (pg/jb)